How do you know when you have a good show idea?
A common instinct is to start with relevance. Choose a topic that feels timely, widely discussed, and important. Something that signals urgency.
Take AI. It is everywhere. It is changing quickly. It matters.
So the thinking goes: “we should do a show about AI.”
The problem is, that is not a show idea. It is a category, or “topic bucket.”
And categories are expansive to the point of being unhelpful.
Buckets are where good ideas go to drown.
Because “AI” could mean anything:
- AI in the workplace
- AI in healthcare
- AI in the creative arts
- AI and climate
Each of these directions can be refined. You can sharpen them, add tension, introduce a point of view:
- Who is actually doing the work in an AI-assisted office?
- What happens when your first doctor is an algorithm?
- Who owns a creative style once a machine can reproduce it?
- Can quantum computing reduce the environmental cost of AI?
These are better. They begin to ask something. They imply stakes.
And this is often where people stop.
But even here, something essential is missing.
Because strong shows do not begin with topics alone. They are anchored by a genetic detail. Something unique to the DNA of their show.
The small thing that changes everything
In the development of most durable shows, there is a moment when the whole concept clicks into place. Notably, it’s rarely the result of a formal decision. More often, it is something first observed during the creative ideation phase and then subsequently recognized as important.
It could be:
- A phrase that keeps resurfacing in conversation.
- A contradiction that resists being resolved.
- A particular way of approaching material that feels both natural and generative.
- A story that carries more weight than expected.
What is being identified in that moment is not subject matter, but orientation. A way of seeing.
This is what gives a show its real “genetic identity.”
You can see this play out across some of the most recognizable programs.
Radiolab is often described as a science show, but its defining feature is not its subject matter. It is the way the sound design performs inquiry. Cuts, loops, interruptions, and rewinds mirror the process of thinking itself. The form is not decorative. It is epistemological. It shapes how knowledge is experienced.
Heavyweight is built on constraint. Each episode returns to a single unresolved moment from the past. Not a comprehensive profile. Just one thing that never quite sat right. That limitation produces depth.
99% Invisible is organized around attention. Its central gesture is to notice what usually goes unnoticed. Over time, that becomes a consistent analytical lens that can be applied to almost anything.
Call Her Daddy is structured around tone. Its defining choice is a performance of candour. The sense that nothing is off-limits becomes the engine of the show.
In each case, a relatively small creative decision becomes foundational. It is repeated, refined, and ultimately recognized, becoming that show’s identity.
A show that found itself the hard way
You can watch this process unfold in real time in Dead Dads, a brand new show created by my business partner Roger Nairn and his collaborator Scott Cunningham.
At first glance, it sounds like a show about grief, and it is: Two men who have lost their fathers talking to others who have experienced the same.
But that description is too broad to be useful.
Afterall, the show did not begin as a strategy. It began with experience. Both hosts had lost their dads and wanted to talk about it.
But even that is not the defining detail.
What truly distinguishes the show is something infinitely more revealing. Both hosts have a strong instinct toward humour. As they began recording, they found themselves telling funny stories about their fathers, even laughing and joking about their deaths.
This could have been corrected. Smoothed out. Framed more conventionally.
Instead, it was recognized as central.
They leaned into it.
You hear it in the tone of the conversations, where guests are given permission to laugh in places that might otherwise feel off-limits.
You see it in the framing of the show, from the tagline, “Death. Jokes. Closure. Not always in that order,” to the slightly goofy theme song lyrics, set to a defiantly chipper tune: “It’s a weird, sad, funny path – but we’re here to help you laugh. It’s the Dead Dads Podcast.”
You feel it in the rhythm of the conversation, where humour and loss sit side by side without needing to resolve into something tidy.
Over time, it becomes clear that the show is not simply about grief.
It is about the awkwardness of grief.
The dark humour.
The mistimed moments.
The difficulty of explaining loss to children.
The way it shows up sideways in conversations between men who are not always practiced at emotional expression.
The small, specific moments that the creators choose to emphasize:
- A joke that lands a little too hard.
- A bitter memory that interrupts a funny story.
- A silence that stretches longer than expected.
This is where the show actually lives.
And crucially, this identity was not “designed” in advance. It was recognized as an authentic piece of the show’s creators’ DNA, and then developed with intention.
Identity isn’t designed. It’s recognized.
There is a tendency to treat a show’s “identity” as something that can be constructed at the outset.
- Define the topic.
- Identify the audience.
- Establish the format.
These are necessary steps, but they do not necessarily produce distinction on their own.
In practice, identity emerges through pattern recognition.
It becomes visible in the kinds of moments that recur. In the tone that feels natural and sustainable rather than performed. In the particular way a creator approaches material.
In branded work, this often connects to what an audience believes about you. Your track record. Your voice. The kinds of stories you can tell with credibility.
The task is not to generalize these elements into something broadly acceptable. It is to identify what is most specific about your voice and build from there.
A show becomes truly coherent when it consistently returns to the same underlying insight, or framing.
Why details stick (and topics don’t)
Audiences rarely retain topics in the abstract.
They remember moments.
- A joke that surfaces unexpectedly in the middle of something serious.
- An awkward social situation that feels a little too familiar.
- A small detail that suddenly clarifies how someone feels.
During the recent lunar mission, astronauts passed behind the Moon and lost communication with Earth for roughly forty minutes. Just before the signal dropped, one of them said, “We’ll see you on the other side.”
That is what people remember. Not the distance travelled, or the underlying technology.
A human voice, about to disappear.
If that mission were a podcast, its defining lens would be human and empathetic, set against a backdrop of epic scale.
The same principle holds in quieter, more personal contexts.
A son recalling a funny detail about his father. A moment that causes his voice to catch because it is precise, and true.
A strong topic might get someone to press play.
A well-observed detail is what stays with them.
